Middle Grade Fiction

In 1941, Peggy’s modest world revolves around her parents, cousin and best friend Delia, and neighbor friends who live within walking distance of her family’s rural Iowa farm. But lately everything seems to be changing.

Septimus is a fastidious, solitary badger living in a little cottage by the sea. Because he has spots instead of typical badger stripes on his nose, prefers the seaside to the traditional forest habitat of badgers, and likes drinking tea and listening to opera, he considers himself a “bad badger.” Sometimes he wonders if he even is a badger.

After decades of backbreaking, thankless sharecropping work in Texas, Will’s father, who was enslaved as a child, is “grim and dull,” and Will longs for a closer relationship with him. When they hear of the Oklahoma Land Rush, they recognize it as the chance of a lifetime. With a wagon of supplies pulled by their mule, Belle, Will and his dad join thousands of others racing to stake out their own land.

Cousins Bee and Alice (white, age 12) reunite after many years for their grandparents’ 50th anniversary in late 2019.

Lissie (white) hopes to learn Spanish on the trip she’s taking with her dad and grandma to visit her dad’s friend Raúl, who lives “where most people speak Spanish.” Word by word, phrase by phrase, Lissie’s Spanish skills expand in that faraway place where she has both new and familiar experiences and meets many kind people.

Siblings Josie, 12, and Abe, 15 (both white), have just moved to a Silver Spring, Maryland, when a car accident leaves their mom with a concussion and Josie in secret possession of a bearded dragon.

Puerto Rican American middle schooler Vale’s identity is largely tied to being an ultra-competitive, nationally ranked junior fencer. But an accident has left her with the lasting effects of a serious leg injury. Vale has not only lost valuable time away from fencing, but she may be facing a lifetime of chronic pain.